Re: Bisect needing to be at repo top-level?

From: Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com>
Date: Sep 17, 2013, 18:38 UTC
Message-ID: <CAJTo0LYp_FNfRYiLY3XivUxFN2JPCics=jbFsX+pVebEZ5XeSg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqbo3rz7ca.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

On 17 September 2013 18:27, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> "Burton, Ross" <ross.burton@intel.com> writes:
>
>> Why does git-bisect need to be ran from the top level of the working
>> tree?  It sources git-sh-setup.sh which sets GIT_DIR, which
>> git-bisect.sh then appears to consistently use.  Is there a reason for
>> needing to be at the top-level, or is this an old and redundant
>> message?
>
> A wild guess.
>
> Imagine if you start from a subdirectory foo/ but the directory did
> not exist in the older part of the history of the project.  When
> bisect needs to check out a revision that was older than the first
> revision that introduced that subdirectory, what should happen?
> Worse yet, if "foo" was a file in the older part of the history,
> what should happen?

"git checkout" doesn't mandate that you're at the top-level, so that's not a very strong argument.

Ross